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Washington State Juan de Fuca Chapter
Juan de Fuca (Ioannis Fokas) or Apostolos Valerianos was born in the 16th century at the village of Valerianos, on the island of Kefalonia in Greece. At a very early age he became a merchant shipman and sought his fortune all over the Mediterranean, eventually winding up in Spain. He set sail for the New World hoping to find a Northwest Passage after passing through the Straits of Magellan and sailing up the Pacific coast of the Americas.¿QUIÉN FUE JUAN DE FUCA?
He believed he had found a Northwest Passage when he passed through what would become the strait bearing his name and traveled inward into Puget Sound. His reports back to the Spanish Crown set off a flurry of expeditions by Spain and her Western European competitors, each hoping to gain advantage over the others by occupying the crucial inlet to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Two hundred years later, the intense interest of United States Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in finding a Northwest Passage to further commerce and communications caused them to order and fund the journeys of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. It was only after Lewis and Clark had explored and mapped the region that all talk of such a Northwest Passage was definitively put to rest.
At the end of his journeys to
the coast of the Pacific Northwest, Juan de Fuca returned to Spain where
he died in obscurity. His grave as well as his notes have been lost
to history.
